Personally speaking…
…In Which Your Author Is Undecided Whether He Should Refer To Himself In the First or Third Person, Singular or Plural.
Blogs are easy – first person singular.
More traditional sites are less easy.
The classic model is to talk of yourself in the impersonal plural (using the company name as the collective), mixed somehow with talking to your customer in the first person plural (“We like to think of our customers as friends”).
The problem is that it’s cumbersome, it’s ugly, and it feels like a lie. The other problem is that from years of reading such verbiage, that’s the way that feels right.
With that in mind, I’m writing up a set of business writing rules. Note that while this applies to business literature in general, I’ve mostly got web site copy in mind here.
1. Honesty, even by implication. I’m a one-man-band (in most ventures), so I’ll use ‘I’, not ‘we’ when referring to myself.
2. I’ll introduce myself. Nothing worse than ‘I’ talking, and the reader not knowing who this is.
3. Screw that fake formality shit. Be me, use a real voice, not putting on a business-like accent.
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